Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 3, 2018

Note: This film is available as part of The Complete Sartana.

One of the perhaps slightly humorous upshots of the incredible success of The Man with No Name Trilogy is that it at least contributed to an influx of often pretty similar properties featuring mysterious (if not always laconic) characters with names. Some of these so-called “Euro Westerns” (of which the “Spaghetti Westerns” were a subset) were insanely popular in their day, even if that popularity didn’t always extend to the shores of the United States (though it quite often did). A cursory sampling of films in this kind of odd niche of genre outings with their putative hero’s name in the titles might include such offerings as the Django films (Django, Django, Kill... If You Live, Shoot!, Hanging for Django, Django, Prepare a Coffin), the Trinity films (They Call Me Trinity, Trinity Is Still My Name! ), the Ringo films (A Pistol for Ringo, The Return of Ringo), the Sabata films (Sabata, Adiós, Sabata, The Return of Sabata) and/or the five Sartana films currently under discussion. What’s a little hilarious about this glut of named characters, all of whom owe at least something to the now legendary Leone - Eastwood collaborations, is that along the way character names kind of came and went, and in various markets some films were marketed as a “named” feature even if that particular character actually wasn’t even featured in the film. In fact one of the enjoyable supplements on Arrow's fairly recent A Pistol for Ringo & The Return of Ringo: Two Films by Duccio Tessari "double feature" were the commentaries by Spaghetti Western experts C. Courtney Joyner and Henry C. Parke, who kind of jokingly recount at one point how one of the Ringo films was marketed as a Sartana film in some foreign market (Joyner and Parke are on hand for these releases as well, and both describe themselves as diehard Sartana fans, and in one of their commentaries for this set also joke about how Django also ended up in a bunch of titles where the character of that name was nowhere to be found). Also kind of amusingly, the character name of Sartana was actually introduced in a "non-Sartana" film, the aforementioned The Return of Ringo, where the character was actually one of the bad guys. But Gianni Garko's characterization was so memorable that the name, if not the actual character, survived as a hero, and as Joyner and Parke recount in their commentaries on this set, Garko went to some lengths (including lawsuits) to protect his take on the character, down to the clothes Sartana wears in the various films.

Gianni Garko returns to the fold as Sartana (if one accepts Sartana's Here... Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin as the third film in the series, as Arrow lists it in this set) in Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay, which may be one of the reasons C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke are so positively giddy with enthusiasm for this film in their highly enjoyable commentary included as a supplement on this Blu-ray. That said, though, Garko’s (re)appearance is certainly not the only reason to enjoy this film, and for me personally it's the hyperbolic direction of this film that really sets it apart from its siblings. This Sartana film takes the already established stylistic eccentricities of the franchise and “turns them up to 11”, with absolutely manic camera moves and incessant zooming in and out that deliver consistent visual energy even when there frankly isn’t all that much going on inside the frame itself.

While once again motives are a little unclear, as in the very first Sartana film, Sartana is out to solve a mystery behind a brutal killing of a pioneer family, and he’s up against a perhaps larger than usual cast of suspects. Kind of strangely, as with some of the other Sartana outings, the putative love interest, Abigail (Daniela Giordano), is never really developed despite the fact that the character probably rates as a damsel in distress. Sartana regular Franco Pesci is back on hand in a fun turn as a gravedigger who has an unfortunate run in with a bad guy early in the film. There’s a land grab subplot going on, and some might argue that Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay is actually one of the more cliché ridden storylines in the entire franchise, but director “Anthony Ascott”’s nonstop inventiveness really invests this film with such inimitable style that it’s easy to go with the flow and/or whip pans.

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet provides the following information on the transfer:

Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with Italian and English mono audio. All restoration work was carried out at L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna. The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 2K resolution on a pin- registered Arriscan and was graded on Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, picture instability and other instances of film wear were repaired or removed through a combination of digital restoration tools and techniques. The mono Italian and English soundtracks were remastered from the optical sound track negatives.

Though sourced from a negative like four of the five films in the Sartana set, this had the least pleasing color saturation and detail levels for me personally. There's a slightly anemic look to the palette here, as well an intermittent purplish undertone that can make flesh tones look a bit flushed and things like some green curtains look almost chartreuse. That said, there is still a lot to like about the look of this transfer. When close-ups are utilized, detail levels are often quite commendable, and some of the outdoor material really pops extremely well. As with the other films in this set, grain looks natural and resolves without any problems.

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

All five of the films feature DTS-HD Master Audio mono tracks in both Italian and English (the covers incorrectly state LPCM 1.0, for what that's worth). There's no significant difference in fidelity and overall sound between the five films, with a couple of exceptions noted below. I opted for the original Italian mixes, while also regularly toggling to the English language tracks for comparison's sake. There is surprisingly little difference in amplitude and general sound quality between the languages, with the possible exception of I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death, where the English language track sounds tinnier, especially with regard to music. All of the Italian language tracks have noticeable hiss, but no other really problematic elements. While sync is loose, as is mentioned in the booklet (due to the Italian tradition of post looping everything), fidelity is surprisingly robust in these films, offering good support for dialogue and effects, which can admittedly sound a little boxy at times (gunfire especially). All five films boast rather interesting music scores, not necessarily as "Morricone-esque" as one might expect, and in fact there's an almost Bacharach like 6/8 theme for I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death. Several scores feature potentially bright instruments like harpsichords, which sound clear without sounding strident. Some of the cues in Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay sound influenced by the then insanely popular music of Lalo Schifrin for television's Mission: Impossible, with bongos establishing tension. Interestingly, Light the Fuse... Sartana Is Coming's English language track has some underscore where the original Italian doesn't.

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke


• The Man Who Came from the Circus (1080p; 22:41) is an interview with screenwriter, actor and stuntman Robert Dell'Acqua. In Italian with English subtitles.


• Gallery (1080p) is culled from the Mike Siegel archive.

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay was my personal favorite of the films in this set, and that's kind of odd in a way, since this film has some fairly hackneyed plot elements as well as an arguably detour filled narrative arc. But there is so much going on in any given sequence, a lot of it "meta" aspects like peripatetic camera moves, that the energy level is routinely quite high. Video is just slightly less pleasing than in the other Sartana films sourced off of negatives. The commentary is great, and Have a Good Funeral My Friend. . .Sartana Will Pay comes Recommended.